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Animal Rights Activists Protest Fur Sales at Bergdorf Goodman

December 10, 2019 by Leave a Comment


The News

On Saturday, December 7th, several dozen animal rights activists with Caring Activists Against Fur (CAAF) and The Animals Battalion staged an anti-fur protest at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in Manhattan. In spite of pending legislation that would ban the sale of fur in NYC and the decision by Macy’s & Bloomingdales to close their fur departments, Bergdorf’s refuses to take fur off of its racks. The protest attracted the attention of thousands of pedestrians on 57th Street and Fifth Ave, the epicenter of Manhattan’s holiday shopping district.

In March, 2019, the Speaker of the New York City Council, Corey Johnson, introduced legislation to ban the sale of new fur products. In spite of widespread support among New Yorkers for a fur ban, the bill stalled after a prominent black preacher in Harlem, Reverend Johnnie Green, decried it as racist.

In op-eds published in New York City newspapers, African American animal rights activists criticized Reverend Green, who was hired by the fur lobby, for using racism to oppose a fur ban. In a Daily News opinion piece Jabari Brisport, a public school teacher running for New York State Senate, wrote “I found it insulting that the fur trade would use my community as a smokescreen. . . I’ve marched with Black Lives Matter in Charlottesville and gotten hit with tear gas by white supremacists.  I’ve been arrested while protesting a luxury housing development in Crown Heights. I know what a threat to the black community looks like. This fur ban ain’t it.”

Energized by the recent passage of a fur ban in the state of California, Voters for Animal Rights, a NYC-based advocacy group, has vowed to continue lobbying NYC lawmakers in support of the Council Speaker Johnson’s legislation.  At the same time, animal rights groups, including CAAF, Animals Battalion, Total Liberation New York and PETA, continue to target prominent retailers selling fur, including Canada Goose,  Nordstrom, Woolrich, Fendi, the Fur Source and Paragon Sports.



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TheirTurn.net Comments

  1. Ernie says:

    Animals are already dead when the fur is taken. So what torture!?!? Made up bs to support YOUR opinion. Not mine. Next I guess you’ll be whining about wool.

    1. Donny Moss says:

      Animals are killed for their fur. They are either captured in painful steel leg hold traps, or they are raised in cages so small that they go insane from the intensive confinement. In 2022, we have many cruelty-free alternatives that provide the same warmth as fur. We don’t need to terrorize animals to stay warm anymore.

  2. Ernie says:

    Its ok to eat them but not wear them? Give me a break! Wearing fur shows nothing of intelligence. Man has been hunting and wearing animal skins since we figured out how to hunt. Fur keeps you warm. Maybe next time I hunt a bear I’ll have a coat made. I’m tired of one group trying to force their beliefs onto another group. If it’s not against the law then leave me alone. As long as the animal isn’t endangered I see no issues with wearing fur. For some people it’s a fashion statement, others its a way to keep warm. I’m sure there are some native Alaskans still wearing polar bear and rabbit fur to keep warm. Most animals these days are raised on farms for food and skins, even fish are farmed. I have an idea, if you don’t want to wear fur, or do whatever then don’t, but stop trying to tell me what I can or can’t do. What I choose do isn’t your decision. It’s mine.

    1. Donny Moss says:

      If your choices have victims, then their advocates have an ethical obligation to speak out on their behalf and encourage you to choose a cruelty-free alternative.

  3. helene weinstein says:

    DONNY…..MY HEART IS FULL….ANGRY BUT FULL…..THE CLIPS OF THESE PROTESTS ARE SO ENCOURAGING ….. I HOPE THERE’S A SNOWBALL REACTION AND THIS FERVOR EXPLODES ALL OVER NYC + EVERYWHERE !!!!!!! HELENE

  4. Zizi says:

    Wearing fur, is like wearing a flashing sign on your back that says:

    – I am ignorant/probably stupid, and definitely sleep-walking through life; my eyes are closed to the suffering of living, breathing sentient beings, including tortured dogs, cats and bunnies, whose skins I may actually be wearing!

    and/or
    – I don’t give a sh*t about anything or anyone…I’m so self-centered and insecure that the only thing that matters to me is how I “look” – so, I believe that wearing so-called “status symbols”, (i.e. what other jerks think represents “status”) is very important to me.

    and/or
    I am so pitifully unconscious, vain and unaware, that I have not yet realized that FUR IS DEAD and only arseholes wear fur!!!

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